Annual Insurance Review Checklist

Download the current declarations page from the broker portal or carrier site. Confirm the named insured matches the legal entity that holds the management agreements — DBA mismatches and stale entity names after an internal restructure are the most common reason a claim gets denied.

Standard for residential PM is $1M per-occurrence / $2M aggregate; commercial work and large multifamily portfolios usually require $2M / $4M. Compare against any limits language baked into your management agreements and lender requirements — under-limits on lender-held assets is a default trigger.

Each owner entity, lender, and HOA you manage for typically requires an AI endorsement (CG 20 11 or equivalent). Check the schedule against your owner roster — newly onboarded owners from the last 12 months are the ones most often missing.

Export the active rent roll from AppFolio / Buildium / Yardi and diff it line-by-line against the schedule of insured locations. Acquisitions, dispositions, and address corrections within the policy term are the typical sources of discrepancy.

Send the broker a list of additions, deletions, and address corrections. Ask for the endorsement to bind retroactively to the acquisition / disposition date so there's no uncovered gap. Save the endorsement PDF in the policy folder.

Confirm coverage is on a Replacement Cost basis, not ACV. Check that the per-building insured value reflects current construction cost — Marshall & Swift or the carrier's cost calculator is standard. Underinsurance triggers coinsurance penalties at claim time.

Review named-storm / wind-hail deductibles (often a 2-5% of insured value deductible per location in coastal markets). Cross-check FEMA flood zone designations on each location; Zone A and V properties need separate NFIP or private flood policies. CA / WA / OR portfolios should evaluate earthquake separately.

WC is regulated state-by-state. Confirm coverage exists in every state where you have W-2 employees — leasing agents in one state, maintenance techs in another, a regional manager working remotely in a third. A missing state on the policy is a common audit finding.

Maintenance techs (NCCI 9015 / 9014) carry a much higher rate than office staff (NCCI 8810). Misclassified payroll surfaces at the year-end audit as a premium true-up bill. Pull payroll by job code and confirm each role is on the correct class.

Standard EL is $1M/$1M/$1M (each accident / disease policy / disease each employee). Required by most umbrella carriers as the underlying scheduled limit. Lower than $1M and the umbrella may not drop down.

Generic real-estate E&O often excludes property management activity. Confirm the policy form expressly schedules tenant placement, rent collection, trust accounting, maintenance coordination, and owner reporting as covered services.

E&O is claims-made. If the retro date is later than when you started managing a property, any claim arising from acts before the retro date is uncovered — even if the claim is filed today. After a carrier change, this is the single most common gap.

Fair Housing Act and state fair-housing claims (source-of-income, ESA refusal, screening criteria) are a top-three claim category for PM firms. Many E&O forms sublimit or exclude FHA claims — confirm the sublimit is meaningful and review any defense-cost-inside-limits language.

The umbrella declarations page lists each underlying policy and the limit the umbrella attaches above. Verify GL, auto, and employer's liability are all scheduled at the limits the umbrella requires — drop one and the umbrella exposes a self-insured layer.

Watch for follow-form mismatches: a coverage included in the underlying GL (e.g., habitational endorsements) but excluded from the umbrella creates a gap exactly where you most need excess capacity. Also verify the umbrella sits over E&O if the carrier supports it.

Bring the gap list to the broker with specifics — which underlying coverage, which umbrella exclusion, which property class is exposed. Ask for an endorsement quote and a market alternative if the incumbent carrier won't move.

Confirm coverage extends to current and former directors, officers, and managers of the management entity. If you serve as the corporate manager for any HOAs you manage, those board members typically need a separate HOA D&O — not your firm's policy.

Side A protects individual directors when the company can't indemnify (insolvency, indemnification denied). Side B reimburses the company for indemnified claims. Side C covers entity claims. Confirm Side A has a dedicated limit so personal exposure isn't eaten by entity claims.

Many D&O forms exclude bodily injury, property damage, and discrimination — coordinate with EPL and E&O so the same claim doesn't fall between three policies. Confirm there's no insured-vs-insured exclusion that would block officer-on-officer disputes.

First-party covers your own incident response, forensics, and business interruption. Third-party covers tenant and owner claims arising from a breach — applicant SSNs from screening, tenant payment data, owner banking info. PM firms hold all three.

State breach-notification statutes (CA Civ. Code §1798.82, NY SHIELD Act, and 48 others) require timely written notice to affected residents and AG offices. Confirm the policy funds notification, credit monitoring, and the breach coach panel — sublimits here are often well below the full policy limit.

Cyber carriers have warrantied controls on the application: MFA on email and remote access, EDR on endpoints, segregated backups, and patching cadence. Misrepresenting these on the renewal application is a rescission risk — confirm what was attested matches what's actually deployed across AppFolio / Yardi / O365.

Loop in IT to deploy or document the missing control before the renewal application is signed. Common shortfalls: MFA missing on legacy email forwarding, EDR not on the maintenance laptops, backup tests never run. Capture evidence (screenshots, console exports) for the carrier file.

Walk the broker through every gap, endorsement, and limit change identified in the prior sections. Confirm market alternatives quoted where the incumbent carrier wouldn't move. Ask for a written summary-of-changes document for the file.

Final approval from the principal or VP Operations. Attach the binder, the broker's summary-of-changes, and any cyber application warranty exhibits to the run record so next year's review starts with a clean audit trail.